Description

Why does ethnicity have varied effects on educational achievement for different national-origin or ethnic groups, even after holding constant key socioeconomic and contextual factors? Why do the children of Asian immigrants, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds, excel and succeed in the educational arena in disproportionately large numbers? This ethnographic study of two Asian immigrant communities in Los Angeles looks at the space between home and school to understand the specific ways in which local social structures, namely neighborhood-based institutions and patterned social relations, function to create a unique social environment conducive to education.

Min Zhou, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology & Asian American Studies and the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in U.S.-China Relations and Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her main areas of research include international migration; ethnic and racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education and the new second generation; Asia and Asian America; and urban sociology. She has published more than 130 refereed journal articles and book chapters, some of which have translated and published in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She is the author of “Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave” (Temple University Press, 1992), “The Transformation of Chinese America” (Sanlian Publishers, 2006), and “Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation” (Temple University Press, 2009); co-author of “Growing up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States” (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998); co-editor of “Contemporary Asian America” (New York University Press, 1st ed., 2000; 2nd ed., 2007) and “Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity” (Routledge, 2004). Zhou is currently working on two book projects: “Chinatown, Koreatown, and Beyond: How Ethnicity Matters for Immigrant Education” (Blackwell, forthcoming) and “Los Angeles’ New Second Generation: Mobility, Identity, and the Making of a New American Metropolis” (with J. Lee).